Yeah the battery life is bloody ridiculous. Only crappy thing for me is I can't run it with LTE because I miss some phone calls which is unacceptable for a 24/7 on-call job >.< 4g is still alright but meh kind of wasted potential. Hopefully they fix that shit one day, but in the meantime everything else about the phone is great.
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Samsung Galaxy Note III |OT|
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zephervack
Member
I guess, Lightflow is killing my battery life, I cant even get a day on mine, im not even using it for hours with the screen on.
But Lightflow does turn on the screen everytime I get a notification, its a must have for me, I have the Note 3 on a docking station by my laptop and I like seeing what im getting when I get notification.
But Lightflow does turn on the screen everytime I get a notification, its a must have for me, I have the Note 3 on a docking station by my laptop and I like seeing what im getting when I get notification.
I see this thread is sadly not that active! I know I was thrown by the "III" when searching for it (I'm holding it in my hand right now and it's not called that!). But anyway, I'll be posting here for anyone who happens to be interested.
This is a late "review" cause I happened to have the chance to get this and wound up liking it a lot more than expected. Just severed my chains with Verizon and made the jump to T-Mobile for about $40 saved every month and, though I had no idea I would be, tossed my Droid 4 for this titan. I've long maintained I'd only ever buy phones with physical keyboards, but that form factor is, honestly, falling by the wayside. I didn't know what phone I would be getting when I walked into the store, and had also previously considered the giant-screen class of phones to be completely ridiculous and nonfunctional. But after seeing the Note 3 in person and playing with it hands-on I was blown away.
No, seriously, this thing is awesome. A week's use now, but tl; dr:if you like the sound of it, you'll love it; if you're interested, it's worth at least holding in your hand; if you just don't want a big phone then it's not for you.
I knew the D4 was underpowered, but... holy... shit. From a 1.2ghz dual-core to a 2.3ghz quad-core. 1GB DDR2 to 3GB LDDR3. A 960x540, four-inch, washed-out TFT screen to a fucking gorgeous, monstrous, 5.7'' 1080p SuperAMOLED, yet 113 more pixels per inch. 1735mAh battery to 3200mAh, minus the shitty, battery-draining LCD. And the Note 3 weighs 12g less.
I grant you it's not a fair comparison, as the phones weren't really in the same class (and the D4 is a real clunker in its own right). But jeez. Mostly it just feels ridiculous to me that these two devices could have been released in consecutive calendar years, both at "luxury" prices. It feels like I skipped multiple generations. If you'd be making any sort of similar spec-wise leap, I promise you will have your mind blown apart. All the things you wanted to be lightning-fast before now... are. I really had no clue how far these things had come.
The size.. make no mistake, this thing is mondo-huge, which will be a problem for some. If you have tiny hands, just don't even consider it for a second. I don't have big hands, but I have longish fingers, and play piano and have a lot of digital dexterity. I've found the experience of getting the phone to do what I want, how I want, to be a lot of fun rather than a chore. Which is another good point- if you're a technophobe, do not even bother. If on the other hand you like the idea of customizing your superphone within an inch of its life, in ways you never imagined you'd have the ability to, this thing is a dream.
For example, figuring out how you'll most comfortably use it one-handed (which is a thing you do with a phone, I don't know why anyone would attempt to deny this), is an exercise in trying out tons of options- and there are TONS. Ignore the "one-handed operation" screen in the options- that little mini-screen swipe thing is an abomination- embrace the "go big or go home" philosophy or, well, go home! But there are bunches of viable options you can use. The one-handed keyboard option is great, cleverly spaced, and a wonderful size- and can be set for left or right-handed use easily. However, I found it simply too low for where my thumb naturally rested holding it with one hand (it's a long phone!). The floating keyboard has become my go-to: easily positioned off to one side and a bit below the center of the screen- so that it's just above the text entry box in Messages- plus thumb-swiping words and poking corrections, and it's already almost second-nature. It's also a miracle for multi-window, described below. Of course, some may not like it cause it covers part of the screen while in use. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, be sure to play around with the hilariously-sized, screen-spanning, full two-hand landscape keyboard. Totally viable for two-thumb touch typing, it is straight up larger than the entire screen of my old phone.
There are many touches, large and small, that make this the phone I've always wanted, but I'll just mention a few:
One thing that isn't a big deal for me but is kinda crazy is that the pen has pressure sensitivity. For reals:
Anyway, yeah, this phone rocks. If anyone is interested, I'll be making followup posts about the customizations I make software-wise, one about the accessories I'm getting my hands on, and if it's up to the task, one about serious gaming on the device.
I do have 3 quick questions for any Note 3 gurus:
1. Lookout? Is this at all worthwhile? Worth actually paying for? What can it even do for me, or is it just useless bloat?
2. Is there a quick-and-dirty list of the Tmobile and Samsung bloatware I can turn off without losing functionality?
3. Any absolutely must-have apps for this device I might not have come across?
This is a late "review" cause I happened to have the chance to get this and wound up liking it a lot more than expected. Just severed my chains with Verizon and made the jump to T-Mobile for about $40 saved every month and, though I had no idea I would be, tossed my Droid 4 for this titan. I've long maintained I'd only ever buy phones with physical keyboards, but that form factor is, honestly, falling by the wayside. I didn't know what phone I would be getting when I walked into the store, and had also previously considered the giant-screen class of phones to be completely ridiculous and nonfunctional. But after seeing the Note 3 in person and playing with it hands-on I was blown away.
No, seriously, this thing is awesome. A week's use now, but tl; dr:if you like the sound of it, you'll love it; if you're interested, it's worth at least holding in your hand; if you just don't want a big phone then it's not for you.
I mourn the loss of a keyboard, but I loathed the Droid 4 by the end of my time with it. However, I didn't get how much I fucking hated that phone until having played with the Note 3 for a day and a half.
I grant you it's not a fair comparison, as the phones weren't really in the same class (and the D4 is a real clunker in its own right). But jeez. Mostly it just feels ridiculous to me that these two devices could have been released in consecutive calendar years, both at "luxury" prices. It feels like I skipped multiple generations. If you'd be making any sort of similar spec-wise leap, I promise you will have your mind blown apart. All the things you wanted to be lightning-fast before now... are. I really had no clue how far these things had come.
The size.. make no mistake, this thing is mondo-huge, which will be a problem for some. If you have tiny hands, just don't even consider it for a second. I don't have big hands, but I have longish fingers, and play piano and have a lot of digital dexterity. I've found the experience of getting the phone to do what I want, how I want, to be a lot of fun rather than a chore. Which is another good point- if you're a technophobe, do not even bother. If on the other hand you like the idea of customizing your superphone within an inch of its life, in ways you never imagined you'd have the ability to, this thing is a dream.
For example, figuring out how you'll most comfortably use it one-handed (which is a thing you do with a phone, I don't know why anyone would attempt to deny this), is an exercise in trying out tons of options- and there are TONS. Ignore the "one-handed operation" screen in the options- that little mini-screen swipe thing is an abomination- embrace the "go big or go home" philosophy or, well, go home! But there are bunches of viable options you can use. The one-handed keyboard option is great, cleverly spaced, and a wonderful size- and can be set for left or right-handed use easily. However, I found it simply too low for where my thumb naturally rested holding it with one hand (it's a long phone!). The floating keyboard has become my go-to: easily positioned off to one side and a bit below the center of the screen- so that it's just above the text entry box in Messages- plus thumb-swiping words and poking corrections, and it's already almost second-nature. It's also a miracle for multi-window, described below. Of course, some may not like it cause it covers part of the screen while in use. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, be sure to play around with the hilariously-sized, screen-spanning, full two-hand landscape keyboard. Totally viable for two-thumb touch typing, it is straight up larger than the entire screen of my old phone.
There are many touches, large and small, that make this the phone I've always wanted, but I'll just mention a few:
- That 1080p screen. For whatever reason I haven't seen reviews really raving about the screen. Yeah it's back to PenTile, sigh, whatever. It's not the best screen out there. It's not, I assume, the biggest screen out there. But for size + quality it sits in a glorious sweet spot the likes of which I've never seen. Remember that it manages to have higher PPI than the iPhone despite over an inch and a half more screen real-estate. Pop a 1080p video on from YouTube to impress people rather simply and convincingly. It's hard for me to imagine anyone being unimpressed with this screen, unless you're literally holding a superior one right next to it with the same thing on it.
- Lots of ways to interact without touching the screen. I wish the air gestures were laced in more tightly, but the hover features, stylus, and voice commands give you plenty of control in the absence of your (often not-quite-sterile or grease-free) fingers on that pristine glass. If you double-tap the home button you get into the voice launcher thing. Turn voiced responses off (unless you're just showing off), and this is legit. I get it, this isn't so cool to do in public, but alone, or in your car, talk to your damn phone! No stranger to iPhone users with Siri of course, or Android 4+ users in general. I assume you can replace this action somehow with Google's native solution, which I'd like to, but Samsung's is pretty functional. It gives quick answers to easy factual questions, and impressed me by sometimes returning full Wolfram info dumps complete with pictures if I asked about broader topics. Setting alarms, timers, super easy. The one major thing it can't do is play my Google Play Music, so I'll need to figure out how to switch it to Google Now asap (likely cutting through TouchWiz which I wanna do anyway).
- Multi-view is a feature I always knew I wanted but never knew existed. I know it's not new to the Note 3, but I don't imagine it's quite so practical without the giant screen. I have heard some serious opposition to this concept, along the lines of "phones aren't for multitasking" and "just focus on one thing!" To this I posit that I multitask on my phone all the god damn time. Typically this involves flipping back and forth between single screens for text or IM conversations and a web browser or work email. This switch back and forth can literally take place a dozen times over a minute. Sometimes I even do it accidentally out of habit and have to go back! But if you think about it, participating in a text or IM conversation is mainly looking at the last response, maybe a message or two back, and typing a reply. There's no reason for this to take up the whole screen when you're focused on something else. I've already found myself settling into a "default" setup of a tiny window at the top for my conversations, and the majority of the screen in Chrome:
It's hard to convey in a screenshot how functional this is, but bear in mind that the reddit "window" is still larger than the entire screen of my old phone. You can easily resize the halves in real-time, and the floating keyboard always faithfully inputs into the active window. And you can set frequent combos as one-touch "shortcuts," which I didn't see the value of at first- but is totally worth the 5 seconds to set them up. It just works.
The "drag content across" function is magic, and in some use cases is actually a legit timesaver, like dragging an embedded image from an email to a text. I'm not even sure what voodoo is taking place here (I guess it takes and stores or snaps a screenshot of the source image, compresses it for MMS, and then deletes the temp image), but whenever you have the chance to use it you feel a lot like you're in the Iron Man future, where screens just do what you want them to. - I've personally always loved the way it feels to use a stylus, and the capacitive screen revolution caused them to fall by the wayside for anything like a flagship phone. But the S Pen is the best I've used. The handwriting recognition is in a class of its own for devices like this, but even just using it on the typical keyboard you'll find you're way faster- technologies like Shapewriter and Swype were first designed with a stylus in mind. Anything having to do with art, school, or business will especially benefit from the precision you get with a stylus, and it really is well-integrated. Most of the features in Air command are a bit gimmicky... I can only foresee myself using Action Memo and the screen capture feature regularly- but the other extra features are great. It shines in the gallery app where you can navigate ridiculously fast and enter into image editing without ever tapping the screen if you want. The hover-click in Messages to attach stuff you've recently found is brilliant and I use it all the time (though admittedly you should be able to do it with a finger somehow). For Remote Desktop apps like LogMeIn/TeamViewer, there's no comparison. I could pretty much recommend the phone even if you'd never use the stylus, but it's worth it.
- That little buzz when you pick it up after you've had it set down somewhere for a while and have a notification. I love this and totally just fits the way I use my phone perfectly. It's a little thing and I know it's not unique to the Note 3, but it gets points from me.
One thing that isn't a big deal for me but is kinda crazy is that the pen has pressure sensitivity. For reals:
All the lines are made in Sketchbook with the same pencil tool (no settings changed), just pressing harder or softer. When I first noticed this I thought I was imagining it, but I looked it up and there's a Wacom digitizer in there. I mean sheesh. Anyone with artistic talent would probably love to have this thing in their pocket. Samsung wisely included a PEN.UP app for people to show off stuff they've drawn with the device. A random sampling yields the expected "wow":
Anyway, yeah, this phone rocks. If anyone is interested, I'll be making followup posts about the customizations I make software-wise, one about the accessories I'm getting my hands on, and if it's up to the task, one about serious gaming on the device.
I do have 3 quick questions for any Note 3 gurus:
1. Lookout? Is this at all worthwhile? Worth actually paying for? What can it even do for me, or is it just useless bloat?
2. Is there a quick-and-dirty list of the Tmobile and Samsung bloatware I can turn off without losing functionality?
3. Any absolutely must-have apps for this device I might not have come across?
The Faceless Master
Member
pretty nice post there! yeah, that's how i felt before i got my Note 2. i didn't want a phone with no physical kb.
Lookout isn't worth paying for. Get Cerberus or just use Google's Android Device Manager.
Thanks! And yeah, I really haven't even looked back. The screen and input options are that good, I barely miss it for anything except gaming, but I'm looking into options there.
I actually don't know much about either of those apps, I'll check them out. Thanks again
Sorry for the bump, but I've been thinking about upgrading to this, from my EVO 4G LTE. Recent use of a pressure sensitive stylus on my tablet was what attracted me to this phone, and I've already gotten pretty accustomed to using a bluetooth headset or earbuds to talk, so the size wouldn't bother me much.
But I'm wondering if now would be a good time to upgrade. Are there any rumors of a Note 4 later this year? Should I hold off?
But I'm wondering if now would be a good time to upgrade. Are there any rumors of a Note 4 later this year? Should I hold off?
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
Finally got mine. But fuccccccccccck knox. Im so pissed off about it. Seems there is NO way to root it without tripping the counter on kitkat (it came pre-installed)
It baffles me why you have a phone with so much gorgeous real estate and the icons looks like they were made for children.
Compare this:-
It baffles me why you have a phone with so much gorgeous real estate and the icons looks like they were made for children.
Compare this:-
Once you have root, get Unicon and a decent icon pack.
Unicon allows you to change all icons at the system level and get rid of the cartoony crap from Touch Wiz.
Unicon works for any launcher too. I'm using it running the Google Now launcher on my GN3.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
Cant root without loosing warranty otherwise that would of been the first thing i did out the box.
They're working on it. I was able to root without tripping Knox, but my device shipped with 4.3.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
Samsung have installed a efuse/ security suite into the bootloader that trips if you root the device. Once tripped, your warranty is voided, with no way of turning it back.
If you are still on 4.3 and haven't got certain patched bootloaders you can root without tripping knox, but even rooted, you cannot install custom roms.
if you are already on 4.4.2 kitkat, you are shit out of luck. Either you put up with it or you root and lose your warranty.
... I might. Rooting this thing seemed a lot easier than what I've read about before, and I would really like a proper adblock when web browsing.
So, they're working on a way around tripping Knox? How long has this been?
... I might. Rooting this thing seemed a lot easier than what I've read about before, and I would really like a proper adblock when web browsing.
So, they're working on a way around tripping Knox? How long has this been?
it has been so since release...
people have been trying to find a way to "untrip" KNOX and on xda, the reward for doing so is about $3000 now
I think as long as you are careful voiding the warranty isn't that big of a deal. I rooted my old galaxy s2 the first month and it was fine for 2 years. My current note 3 was rooted even quicker since I wanted Japanese language support. Its been running flawlessly aside from some problem with flashing to 4.4 since when I got it in october
Marion Cobretti
Member
Would anyone mind posting pics of GAF Mobile with the biggest text please. Black theme.
I'm considering getting one of these to replace my Nexus 4/7. I almost always have both on me. Was thinking maybe this'll be the device that allows me to only carry one thing.
I'm considering getting one of these to replace my Nexus 4/7. I almost always have both on me. Was thinking maybe this'll be the device that allows me to only carry one thing.
Marion Cobretti
Member
not a screen shot, just a picture of the phone with a thread, and one of the forums. thanks.
Mineshaft_Gap
4077th
I've been putting off installing the 4.4 update. Any word on the update? Does it fuck anything up?
Marion Cobretti
Member
Damn, looks awesome.
What do you guys, how's the battery life if you read lots of GAF?
Tempted to get this and drop my Nexus 4 / 7.
Would be nice to only carry one device around.
What do you guys, how's the battery life if you read lots of GAF?
Tempted to get this and drop my Nexus 4 / 7.
Would be nice to only carry one device around.
Spectrum128
Member
Hi, sorry to Necro the thread.
Just got my Note a couple of weeks ago and love it.
However, something is bugging me. I have the UK version which has a 3 pin mains plug. When you assemble the mains adaptor, the three pins click into the main part of the transformer completing the assembly. However, despite clicking in my plastic top prong (earth) doesn't seem to stay firmly in position though and will swing back down.
Does anyone else have that issue?
Just got my Note a couple of weeks ago and love it.
However, something is bugging me. I have the UK version which has a 3 pin mains plug. When you assemble the mains adaptor, the three pins click into the main part of the transformer completing the assembly. However, despite clicking in my plastic top prong (earth) doesn't seem to stay firmly in position though and will swing back down.
Does anyone else have that issue?
w1ck3dn1nj4
Member
Note 3 UK version here. Nope dont have the issue. Perhaps the top plastic bit is loose on your unit but even then I fail to see how its an issue once you click the bottom two pins into place? If youre not happy I say just get a replacement from ebay or something
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-Samsung-GALAXY-S5-Note-3-Mains-Charger-Plug-Head-USB-3-0-Data-Cable-/181455821696?pt=UK_MobilePhones_MobilePhoneAccessories_MobilePhoneChargers&hash=item2a3f9c1b80
Spectrum128
Member
Thanks for that. I think I've got a faulty one as it won't stay in position when everything is clicked together.
zephervack
Member
Since updating to 4.4, I have had massive issues with battery, its been abysmal, finally decided to root using Towelroot (doesnt trip Knox) and im finally getting some battery life back after Greenifying some apps, but the ROM still has a bug somewhere as ANDROID SYSTEM still uses a ridiculous amount of battery.
Too bad, the phone is almost perfect in any other way, but this will probably be my last Samsung device.
Too bad, the phone is almost perfect in any other way, but this will probably be my last Samsung device.
The only results I've seen are a good 6 months or older on different firmware/software.
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